


The Lark’s Requiem

by StarsInMyDamnEyes



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Competent Jaskier | Dandelion, Contemplation, Gen, Geralt will not show up for many moons but when he does, Gratuitous Swearing, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Immortal Jaskier | Dandelion, Injury, I’m abusing italics again, Jaskier has been known to lie, Jaskier is lonely, No Post-Mountain Geralt Vilification, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Post-Episode: S01E06 Rare Species, Sorcerers doing douchebag sorcerer things, Witcher Jaskier | Dandelion, Witcher Senses, a lot angstier, and sad, don’t worry he gets better, excessive light-heartedness, is it a misunderstanding if one of them is just lying out of shame, lots of corpses, lowkey im so tired it wasnt that deep, no beta we die like eist :(, oh uh, probably should have tagged that first dhgfjhsgjh, tags to be updated as work progresses, there shall be, this will get angstier, unreliable narrator (kinda idk I’ll tag it anyways), we now have an Eskel lads it’s happening, yep. ANOTHER ONE
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23761069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarsInMyDamnEyes/pseuds/StarsInMyDamnEyes
Summary: There was a time, Jaskier thought distantly, when he wouldn’t have minded this at all.A time when he could simply grin and bear it as his own blood trickled down his chin, as his insides tore themselves apart and knitted themselves back together again, as the body that Jaskier had spent decades inhabiting decided it quite fancied a complete overhaul of everything, and made this known by bleeding Jaskier dry, setting his nerves on fire, and altogether destroying the bard little by little and all at once as his anatomy inched its way, excruciatingly, towards its new shape.There was a time when Jaskier would have toughed it out, for the sake of the people who would be there on the other side, waiting for him, as well as himself.That time had passed, however, long ago.
Relationships: Eskel & Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 235
Kudos: 419





	1. the chemicals, they dull me into sleep as i die young

**Author's Note:**

> Yep. It’s another witcher!Jaskier AU. What did you expect of me?? That I do not make 70 of these?
> 
> I blame @jask-jaskier-jaskiest on tumblr and their excellent tags for this one. And the fact that it’s going to be a multichapter. It’s their fault.
> 
> I’m not discontinuing Death to the Details, by the way, if anyone was wondering (probably not :D) - I’m just writing 2 multichapter witcher!jaskier fics now. Because I can >:)
> 
> Also yeah i really am lazy enough to make the summary the first few lines of the fic, but, in my defence (or condemnation), I am small, sad, and stupid
> 
> :)

There was a time, Jaskier thought distantly, when he wouldn’t have minded this at all.

A time when he could simply grin and bear it as his own blood trickled down his chin, as his insides tore themselves apart and knitted themselves back together again, as the body that Jaskier had spent decades inhabiting decided it quite fancied a complete overhaul of everything, and made this known by bleeding Jaskier dry, setting his nerves on fire, and altogether destroying the bard little by little and all at once as his anatomy inched its way, excruciatingly, towards its new shape.

There was a time when Jaskier would have toughed it out, for the sake of the people who would be there on the other side, waiting for him, as well as himself.

That time had passed, however, long ago.

He’d heard rumours of these experiments, before, but he’d dismissed them as bullshit - and really, was he to blame for being wrong such an assessment? _There’s a mage who wants to bring back the witchers_ , the townsfolk had said, in the same hushed tones as they whispered that _elves eat human children for sustenance_ , or _I heard the reason for Nilfgaard’s war is that their king made a deal with the gods, and in return must unite the continent under one rule_ , or - and this was Jaskier’s personal favourite - _Jaskier the bard must be a faerie, he’s not aged a day and he’s well over forty, and his songs enthral his audience like nothing else!_

He was equal parts flattered and insulted at that one.

The fact remained, though, that in this case, the rumours had been _true_ , and there really was a mage trying to recreate the witcher... formula? Tests? Trials? Hadn’t Geralt mentioned Trials at one point? Regardless, the sorcerer was trying to recreate them, and Jaskier - what with his absolutely fucking abysmal track record of not getting into trouble - had gotten caught up right in the middle of it, and he was fairly certain that the reason he’d all but coughed up all of his insides and more - twice - was because some clown thought that Jaskier would be an excellent test subject for round two of making new witchers.

At one point, when Jaskier was still deluded enough to think that Geralt was his _friend_ , who _liked_ him, and kept Jaskier around out of affection and not some grudging inclination to humour his fantasies, he would have been able to grit his teeth and tough it out, knowing that there was someone waiting for him on the other side.

Now, Jaskier was half-inclined to drop dead just to spite the stupid fucking mage and their stupid fucking experiments, even if that generally wasn’t something one could do on command. Apparently he’d been taking to the trials remarkably well - the sorcerer, under their ridiculous hooded cloak, had been very excited about Jaskier’s _progress_.

Wouldn’t it be such a beautiful _fuck you_ if he managed to hang himself on his chains, then? If he wasn’t too busy vomiting up half of his internal organs, he might well have at least tried.

It had been - according to Jaskier’s very rough and shoddy estimates, given that he’d spent most of his time in this little cell blacking out, unconscious, or otherwise in excruciating pain, he’d been here for at least three weeks.

He had been lucid for approximately an hour, and the scent of blood was making him sick, as staggeringly overpowering as it was, The draughty cell howled with the noise of the breeze that cut through it, as the ventilation system that had been set up did its highly annoying work.

The bard would gladly have asphyxiated at that moment, if only the whistling through-draught would just shut up and leave him be.

Jaskier simply lay there, chains still around his wrists, in a pool of congealing blood, eyes closed and head pounding. He’d never been awake for so long - the sorcerer who’d been grievously violating his bodily autonomy had usually been quick to administer the next potion the moment he showed any outward sign that his torment was lessening, the utter arsehole.

Come to think of it, the sorcerer had never left Jaskier alone for so long, either. The one clear memory he had of the past... _however_ long it had been, was the incessant _hovering_.

Jaskier cracked open an eye and immediately wished he hadn’t, head spinning as he was hit with the sharpest, most vivid rendering of his surroundings he could ever have imagined... perhaps even _more_ intense than any of his wildest stretches of what if might be like, and Jaskier had a very good imagination - even if he did say so himself.

 _Fuck_. He wouldn’t be getting rid of that migraine any time soon.

As his panting breaths registered as his own, and he adjusted to the painful clarity with which he perceived his surroundings, Jaskier pulled himself into a sitting position - an action that was not nearly as painful as he’d expected.

His chains clinked, uncomfortably loud, and Jaskier’s gaze alighted upon the dozens of potion bottles laid out on a wooden table on the other side of the stone cell, all empty, the barest hints of potion residue visible in all of them, the faint reek of whatever it had been inside them almost completely drowned out by the overpowering tang of Jaskier’s blood.

Ah.

That answered that question, then.

Jaskier shifted once, more, chains clinking once again, and he noticed that he was not actually chained to the wall anymore.

The metal ring that the chains had been looped through had been pulled out of the stone it had been embedded into with considerable force, it seemed, given the significant damage the area had received. Inspecting the chains themselves, Jaskier noted a significant depression in once of the links - likely the one the ring had been pressed against when it had been pulled from the wall.

A very considerable force, then.

Either way, Jaskier was, it seemed, free to leave. The rusted cuffs and chain held, much to his disappointment, but he was no longer tethered to the wall, which was the main thing.

The wooden cell door was not locked - the mage had been too fond of bursting in at random hours to add something so fiddly - which Jaskier was now thankful for, given that he could simply walk out.

Perhaps, under different circumstances, he might have been concerned that this was so easy - but it was hard enough to stumble forwards, with the ache in his trembling limbs that the Trials had so kindly gifted him making him barely able to stand, let alone make a break for it. Most likely, the sorcerer had simply not expected Jaskier to be able to get up at all, let alone attempt to escape.

Served them right. Fuck that presumptuous shitrag. Fuck them and their witcher experiment bullshit all the way to hell and back.

Barely able to lift his arms to push open the door, Jaskier resorted to collapsing on it and hoping that it opened outwards.

It did not, in fact, open outwards, and Jaskier yelped as he slid off the wood and crashed to the floor. Fucking sorcerer. Fucking door. Fucking sorcerers and their fucking inwards-opening doors.

It was a few minutes before Jaskier could bring himself to stand again, but this time, he managed to pry the door - which was a lot lighter than it looked - open, and stumble into the corridor.

Immediately, he realised why the sorcerer had abandoned him.

It appeared that not all of the blood he’d smelt was his own, as mutilated corpses lay strewn all over the damn floor. The sorcerer lay at his feet, hood finally off and blood streaming from all their orfices, desperation and terror frozen on their face.

They looked young, barely an adult, but Jaskier couldn’t find it in himself to pity them - not when they had so many innocents’ blood on their hands. Even if - and it was always questionable with sorcerers, as stupidly long-lived as they were - this one was actually as young as they seemed, Jaskier would not grant absolution based on such an arbitrary standard. They’d experimented on and tortured people for fun. The more vindictive part of Jaskier was glad that the sorcerer was dead, and that they had died in pain.

The rest of him was disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to grill them for answers.

The other corpses, the men strewn around the corridor, looked to be bandits or raiders of some sort, the remnants of their organised formation and cohesive style of dress suggesting that they were some kind of unit, though Jaskier couldn’t possibly tell who or what they were, or why they’d have been here in the first place.

Lowering himself as carefully as he could, he crouched down next to the sorcerer, and lifted their cloak.

If they had chained Jaskier up, they had to have had the keys to lock the cuffs in the first place. There was always the off-chance that the cuffs had been magicked shut, but he knew well enough that magic always demanded a price to be used - it would be less than sensical to use it for something so mundane.

Jaskier’s eyes alighted on a keyring in the dead mage’s pocket, several keys dangling from it, which he reached for with trembling fingers.

A light-headedness overcame him, and he stumbled back, pushing at the door to the cell he’d just crawled out of with a fist desperately clutching the keyring.

If he was going to pass out in someone’s blood, then it would be his own, gods damn it. He had no desire to come to face-to-face with a corpse.

He didn’t make it into the cell before he slid, once again, to the floor.

Numbing emptiness overtook him, as he fell into unconsciousness, keys still pressed between his fingers and palm like it was his most precious possession.

Numbing emptiness overtook him, soothing his pounding skull.

Numbing emptiness overtook him, and when he woke some time later, his head was no longer aching, and his limbs no longer trembling.

His foot was also in the dead sorcerer’s face. So much for not waking to the sight of a corpse.

Curiously, the keyring was still in his hand, grasped in his hand a dead man’s grip, even as Jaskier had fallen unconscious. Picking the key closest matching the metal of his cuffs, he inserted it into the tiny lock, and was pleased to find that it fitted neatly, unlocking the restraint with a resounding click. Soon, Jaskier had shed his shackles, and observed the sight before him.

The dead men wore bits and pieces of armour, and were armed to the teeth - and who was Jaskier to pass up such a haul? He would gladly take up the weapons laid before him - dead men couldn’t fight, under the usual circumstances - and then, maybe next time some eclectic sorcerer with a penchant for kidnapping and human experimentation tried to jump him, he could stick them before they did any damage to him.

Jaskier, the travelling bard did not have any combat training to speak of, but Julian Alfred Pankratz, probably Viscount de Lettenhove unless his father was somehow still kicking - and really, it was probably unhealthy, the amount of detachment between the two names and personas that both referred to the exact same person - Julian knew his way around a dagger.

He’d been trained to a degree at the insistence of his father, who posited that a noble should achieve some level of competence with a rapier on principle - and Jaskier had decided to stick it to him by convincing his instructor to teach him how to wield short swords and daggers instead, under the correct assumption that it would prompt his father to have a conniption about why Jaskier was wielding weapons so unbecoming of a noble.

He’d been pretty good with them, at one point, a quarter of a century ago. He did not have high hopes for himself currently.

The dagger in his boot was gone, though he thankfully still had his boots themselves, at least, as well as the clothes on his back, sans his doublet, covered in blood and bodily fluids as he was.

Still, it didn’t bother him too much. He had a veritable armoury to pick from, as well as whatever clothes he chose to yank off the corpses strew before him. Most of the men were bloodied, but not as much as Jaskier, which was a plus.

First things first, though. If the sorcerer could attend to Jaskier with as much frequency as they did, they had to have been living here, and Jaskier intended to make use of their quarters to get cleaned up a little. It had, after all, been weeks since he’d last bathed, and he was covered in his own gore.

Picking his way across the field of corpses, Jaskier peered into every room he passed, disappointed to see rotting bodies and potion bottles in the other cells, the noxious scent of what had to have been witcher mutagens clinging to each room.

Fuck, this smell thing was weird. How did Geralt manage it? The overpowering sharpness of his senses was giving him a migraine _again_ , already, and he was in a dark, silent dungeon.

He walked towards the end of the corridor, where stone stairs led upwards in a spiral. The grey slabs looked old and worn - too old to have been placed at any point within the last two centuries.

Admittedly, that piqued Jaskier’s curiosity. Where was he? Clearly nowhere in Temeria, where the sorcerer had stumbled upon him, they didn’t really go in for this kind of architecture, never had - if Jaskier had to hazard a guess, he’d say he was somewhere in Kaedwen - he could work with that. Thank gods for the repository of useless knowledge his time at Oxenfurt had left him with. He could distinctly remember his seventeen-year-old self complaining to thin air about how he’d never find himself in need of the ability to identify the different styles of architecture found in different kingdoms, this was such a pointless thing to include in the syllabus, and couldn’t they just get to the music part already... Now, Jaskier was eating his words. He was in Kaedwen, and he knew that only because of the boring bloody architecture.

Pox on it all, he was in bloody _Kaedwen_. Other than perhaps Nilfgaard, there was no place he was less familiar with. He’d not been to Kaedwen for years, and for good reason - Geralt, thanks to the close proximity of Kaer Morhen, probably, liked to frequent the kingdom.

As a result of this, Jaskier had avoided it like the plague.

It had seemed like a great idea at the time, he fumed, as he clambered up the spiral staircase, but _no_ , now he was in the _one bloody kingdom_ he _knew_ he had no place to go in.

Actually, no. That wasn’t quite correct. If Jaskier really _was_ a witcher now, at least physically, then he had nowhere to go in general. He’d be turned away by previously amicable acquaintances, he didn’t doubt. Chased from Oxenfurt with knives and pitchforks.

He was in Kaedwen. This was, as it turned out, a good thing. At least nobody knew him in Kaedwen.

Part of him wished that Geralt was here, that Geralt could help him, comfort him, hold him whilst he mourned the end of his bardic career, and help him pick up the pieces after all this, keeping him by his side as he adjusted, _protecting_ but that - hah! - that was even more unrealistic than him just waltzing back out into the wide world and resuming his bardic career as though nothing had happened. He didn’t appreciate the reminder at any rate - the reminder that Geralt couldn’t give a rat’s are about what Jaskier was up to, and the reminder that Jaskier _still_ found himself wishing for his company. That Jaskier couldn’t bring himself to return the bloody favour and hate the stupid witcher like the Geralt apparently hated him.

Or perhaps Jaskier just didn’t want to be alone. It was all the same, really.

At the top of the staircase, he found himself in a fairly grand hallway. The sorcerer’s residence was actually quite nice, disregarding the creepy torture dungeon. It reminded him vaguely of the building that he’d met Yennefer of Vengerberg in, now that he thought of it, if he’d met Yennefer in Kaedwen.

It was a refreshing change of surroundings from the bloodied dungeons, at any rate. Besides, and perhaps more importantly, it would undoubtedly have a bath that Jaskier could make use of, to clean both himself and then his clothes to the best of his abilities... if they were salvageable.

He hoped they were. He had precious little left - if his memory served, he’s smashed Filavandrel’s lute over the sorcerer’s head in a last-ditch attempt to escape, and who knew where the rest of his belongings were?

The house was grand, and rather old-fashioned, which made sense given the age of the stone stairs. Jaskier stumbled upon the bath almost immediately - a luxurious stone one, nicer than anything he’d ever bathed in since his childhood - and wasted no time drawing himself a bath, patently ignoring the returning ache in his limbs that protested the action. Jaskier had been lying in his own bloody viscera for upwards of three weeks, and he was going to have a bath, residual pain from three weeks of torture be damned.

As the water splashed into the bath, Jaskier winced, and tried very hard not to feel guilty for all the times Geralt had told him he wanted silence that Jaskier had ignored. He hadn’t know the world could be so damn _loud_.

His head was pounding by the time the bath was ready, so perhaps he could use that as his excuse. He knew bloody well what the sorcerer had done to him, knew bloody well what he’d _become_ , because Jaskier wasn’t as oblivious as people seemed to think he was, thank you very much - but he couldn’t stop his flinch when he caught his reflection in the water.

His face was covered in blood and possibly also vomit, yes, but it was his eyes, his _damn_ eyes that had spooked him.

He’d look himself in the eye plenty of times, in mirrors and such, because he didn’t look as good as he usually did by never seeing his own reflection, and he was plenty familiar with the blue-grey irises he was _supposed_ to have, but the eyes staring back at him from the water were ones that did not belong to him.

They were Geralt’s eyes.

Geralt, Geralt, Geralt. Fucking Geralt. And he’d been doing so well not thinking about the man before this whole ordeal, as well.

Jaskier all but threw himself into the bath, and immediately regretted it. The hot, steamy water was an _assault_ on his senses. A strangled choke left him, and he clenched his fists. He, Jaskier, a humble bard, had survived the fucking _Trials_. He would not be brought low by a goddamn bath.

The bath, however, was putting up an excellent fight.

The sheer intensity of the hot liquid against him made Jaskier wanted to rip his skin off, but instead, he settled for scrubbing at all the dried blood and other bodily fluids that marked his skin, which was even more bloody uncomfortable.

He would not be beaten by some stupid water and some stupid grime. He _wouldn’t_.

By the time he’d gotten to his hair, he was almost used to the uncomfortable, prickling sensation of the water, at the small cost of a headache so intense that, had this been under any other circumstance, Jaskier would have been dragging his arse to a healer.

As it was, he merely focused on washing the blood and possibly also vomit out of his matted hair.

Gods, this whole witcher experiment thing was so unhygienic. Jaskier had absolutely no idea how he’d managed to get so much gristle in his _hair_ , but somehow, he _had_.

The bath was almost room temperature by the time he’d managed to free himself of the last of the mess he’d spewed up in the cell, and he resigned himself to washing his clothes, too. He quickly determined that his chemise was somewhat salvageable, though he doubted that the stains would ever wash out properly, leaving large patches of brown all over it - but other than that, and his boots, he would need to find something else to wear.

How far he’d fallen, Jaskier thought wryly, as he hung his chemise over a nearby ledge to dry. To think that something he was about to pry off a corpse would be more hygienic than his own fine silks.

It was somewhat ironic that, now that he wasn’t constantly smelling the stench of his own gore, the foul odour in the dungeon was even more overwhelming and pungent. The reek of blood and decomposing bodies at such an intensity was something Jaskier would pay to never have to suffer again.

Still, he braved it magnanimously - for all he liked to complain on the road, even where there was nobody to listen, he could still tough out a few unpleasant situations. He wasn’t as much of a milksop as people tended to assume. Fuck, he had more of a stomach than even he thought he’d had. If someone had told him a month ago he’d be looting corpses after scrubbing three weeks worth of bodily fluids out of his hair, he’d have laughed in their face with great confidence.

As it was, he was pulling soft, brown trousers, undoubtedly designed for fighting, off of a decomposing man’s legs. He only hoped that the unfortunate young man wasn’t rotten enough that his dick would get pulled off his remains with the clothing. If Jaskier had to see _that_ , he would undoubtedly scream, in a most loud and undignified manner - outward impressions and dignity be _damned_.

He tugged the trousers free, thankfully devoid of any kind of human remains, and, almost as an afterthought, took the man’s nondescript jacket as well. It was dark red, and it would fit him well enough, from the looks of it.

Now, for the weapons. Jaskier wasn’t about to let a veritable armoury go to waste, after all.

Finesse weapons such as short swords - short swords specifically, in fact - were Jaskier’s first choice, and, as luck would have it, one of the men had a pair of them in his dead hands, numb fingers barely still closed around the hilts. That was nice of him.

He picked up the swords and set to work unfastening their sheaths from the dead man, the blanket he’d wrapped around himself on the interim jostling uncomfortably as he did so. It was surprisingly easy to manhandle items off corpses compared to his original assumptions - he’d have expected it to be far more fiddly an endeavour.

Weapons, clothes... he needed coin. He needed coin if he were to leave, and there was no way he was going to stay in the house any longer than he needed to - the many corpses in the basement aside, a sorcerer had taken up residence here. Who knew what kinds of horrible, cursed items were lying around, simply waiting for an idiot bard to knock them so that they could unleash their evil powers? The memory of the djinn was still far too fresh in his mind, the occasional phantom pains far too familiar in his throat, for him to risk getting cursed again.

Jaskier snorted under his breath, at that. All his newfound caution, and where had it gotten him? A cell covered in his own congealing blood, where he surely would have rotted away, abandoned and forgotten, had it not been for a well-timed convulsion freeing his chains from the wall.

Picking his way across the bodies, her quickly noticed that none of the men carried coin pouches on their hip, much to Jaskier’s perplexed frustration. What kind of man carried no coin?

Still, if he couldn’t procure any coin outright, Jaskier would have to work around the problem. There was more then enough in the house that the bard could loot and sell, and, while that wasn’t exactly honourable of him, it was mainly the sorcerer’s fault that he was doing it in the first place. He hadn’t stripped _himself_ of all he owned before a casual bout of human experimentation, after all... And he figured that, even if his prized lute hadn’t been lying, smashed into pieces, by the side of some Temerian dirt track, he wouldn’t have been making any coin performing as he was.

Witchers generally did not get paid to sing, and to the outside eye, that was what Jaskier was, now.

How laughable. Jaskier was the furthest thing from a bloody witcher that there was. If nothing else, his time with Geralt had at least taught him that much.

He made his way up the stairs again, arms full of armour, clothes, and weaponry, and stumbled back to where he’d left his chemise to dry. It was far more dull brown than white, at this point, of course it would have been his best white chemise that he ruined in the Trials, and it was now almost completely dry.

Tugging on his new outfit - and gods above, did the sensation of slightly damp fabric against Jaskier’s skin make him want to claw the clothes off of his back - Jaskier neatly fastened the two scabbards onto his person. It wasn’t steel and silver protection, far from it - they were some kind of iron alloy, if he had to hazard a guess, and it had also been a very long time since he’d had to appraise a blade, though these ones were of sound quality, and seemingly well-cared for - but the short swords would do well enough.

It was enough for Jaskier that he had blades that he could actually _wield_. He didn’t have the time to worry about quality.

Rolling his looted belongings up in the blanket he’d appropriated and hauling his makeshift pack over his back, Jaskier decided to set off, away from this godforsaken house. He was well aware that this was probably not the wisest course of action, but fuck it - he was not staying in that _damn_ house a second longer than he needed to.

The summer should have turned to autumn by now.

Jaskier had heard that Ard Carraigh was nice this time of the year, insofar as Ard Carraigh could be described as nice - the place was a bit of a shithole, in the bard’s humble opinion.

Still, it was a destination, and so Jaskier set off, patently ignoring the aching tendrils of a migraine that twisted around his skull.


	2. the drudgery of living will one day give way to death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was bad luck, Jaskier was familiar with bad luck, but _this_ , this was absolutely fucking ridiculous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is so late jdhgfjahf my excuse is that I’m stupid and bad at organising my time
> 
> I broke my unspoken rule to not use lines from other things as chapter titles but technically this doesn’t count bc all chapter titles are taken from a shit poem that i wrote when i was sad so like. It doesn’t count bc i said so. There are a bunch of lines that really fit this fic so I’m using them, it doesn’t count
> 
> If this chapter comes off as Geralt-bashing (i hope it doesn’t but Just in Case) it’s not - Jaskier is just an Unreliable Narrator who is personally mad at Geralt and exaggerating. Maybe i worry too much, maybe, but better Disclaimer than Misunderstanding, you know

It had been a a week since Jaskier had woken up in a stone cell, his own concealing blood sticking to his skin, and every single second since then had been absolutely fucking miserable.

He’d tried to sell his scavenged goods, but nobody had been willing to pay him more than half of what anything he had was actually worth, and he was painfully, acutely aware of why. People didn’t like witchers, and to their eyes, that was what Jaskier _was_. Never mind that he hadn’t properly held a sword since his childhood. They didn’t care.

Jaskier’s head hurt too much for him to bother argue with them, on that. Stupid bloody witcher senses - it had been a _week_ , and he hadn’t managed to shake the migraines. He’d been too tired, too pained to argue the prices of his wares... perhaps that was why witchers generally performed the Trials in at least adolescence, if not outright childhood. It was undoubtedly easier to acclimate to the mutations.

Still, he wasn’t just going to give up. He needed coin, badly - there was a reason he’d never been the one to hunt on his previous trips with a certain companion, and that was due to the fact that he was abominably shit at it.

So here he was, at the third merchant he’d found, trying his best to sell his wares.

“Come on, it’s good quality!” Jaskier grumbled, trying not to rub his temples too much. It wouldn’t help the migraine, and it would just get on his, and likely the merchant’s, nerves.

“I don’t buy from witchers.”

The man’s tone was hostile and cutting, and Jaskier felt like banging his aching head against the man’s cart. “Do you see a medallion on me, good sir?”

“What’s that got to do with anything, witcher?”

Jaskier pointedly did not roll his eyes. “Witchers have medallions. I’m just an idiot with unfortunately-coloured eyes.”

“An idiot with unfortunately-coloured eyes, armed to the teeth, in a bloodied shirt. Pull the other one.”

“It’s my blood, if that helps.”

The merchant snorted, clearly not appeased in the slightest. Apparently the Trials had not been kind to Jaskier’s charisma, though if it was his appearance or his aching head that had done the deed was unclear. Possibly, it was both.

“Will you buy my shit if I threaten you?” Jaskier asked, suddenly. “Wave a sword around, that kind of thing?”

The merchant raised an eyebrow.

“What? I need coin.”

“Take a contract, witcher. I’ve heard that there’s a kikimora or summat in the forest.”

Jaskier groaned, loudly. “That’s the problem, my good friend, I’m not a witcher! I can’t take a contract, I don’t know how to fight a kikimora, and I don’t particularly want to be unnecessarily mauled to death just because someone asked it of me!”

The merchant shrugged, and turned away. “Up to you, witcher.”

“Fucking arsehole,” Jaskier muttered, turning away from the man and his gods-forsaken cart. It was obvious at a glance that everything Jaskier had looted from the sorcerer’s house was of better quality, and thus higher value, than any of the flimsy wares he was selling.

This was ridiculous. Given Jaskier’s lack of opportunity, the merchant could have demanded Jaskier sell what he was offering at half of what it was worth, perhaps even less, and he’d have had to comply.

The merchant could have turned a fine profit, but _no_ , he had to turn him down, because the only fucking constant in Jaskier’s life these days was that he always, _always_ ended up drawing the short straw in every single situation that he found himself in. He’d have said his life had gone to shit since the dragon mountain, but the reality was, now that he thought about it, that he’d been suckered at every turn ever since he bumped into Geralt of Rivia in that stupid, shitty little tavern in Lower Posada.

Jaskier strode away from the little Kaedweni village - the third that he’d passed through so far - lost in his bitter thoughts. He’d thought he’d known what he was doing when he threw away so many things in favour of Geralt’s company, all those years ago. He’d built himself a reputation as a witcher’s bard, a witcher’s barker, and many people were unwilling to keep the company of a _freakish mutant’s stooge_ , as he’d found out. He’d known that. He’d known that, and didn’t care. He’d thought Geralt was worth it.

He’d been so, so fucking wrong.

Geralt didn’t even _like_ him. And sure, maybe the kinds of fair-weather friends he would have accumulated otherwise would be painfully useless in his _current_ situation, equally likely to spurn him as they would a real witcher, Jaskier knew, but having someone - anyone - to run to with his tail between his legs, who’d offer him a roof and easy company and not demand more of him than he was at all willing to give, would have been his saving grace a month ago.

It was, after all, much harder for a sorcerer to jump you when one was lounging on a fellow bard’s couch in some upscale residence, regardless of how shitfaced one was.

Still, it wouldn’t do to dwell on could-have-beens. Jaskier could have been so many things, had he wanted to - a viscount, a court bard, a professor... But he wasn’t.

He was sort-of a witcher, he was living off berries in the fucking Kaedweni forests, filthy and tired and alone.

It was depressing, really.

Jaskier dropped his meagre, makeshift pack onto the forest floor, collapsing into a tired heap beside it not two seconds later.

All that time spent travelling with- _no_. He wasn’t going to think about Geralt again. Nothing good would ever come from dwelling on that, dwelling on all the years of his life, all his love, damn it, that he’d handed to a man who hated him, on a silver platter. Nothing good ever came from dwelling on all that had all been thrown away.

Still, for all the many times he’d made camp in the forests across the continent, with or without company, he’d never expected it to feel so achingly unfamiliar.

Sitting on the dirt floor as a fire crackled before him had felt so different a scant few weeks ago. With the company of Filavandrel’s lute, it had been peaceful, and calm. He’d felt at ease, strumming old melodies by the warmth of a crackling campfire, an escape from the overbearing weight of the world when it all had gotten too much, especially after that damned mountain.

Now, Jaskier was alone. He was alone, hungry, and tired, with no energy even to hum a tune that would surely only remind himself of better times and depress him.

He busied himself with lighting a fire, instead.

Witchers, he knew, could do this with a simple sign, aiming an Igni at a pile of sticks and enjoying the fire, and, not for the first time, Jaskier mentally cursed his misfortune. Really, it was ridiculous - all of the drawbacks of being a witcher, and precisely none of the benefits. Signs and swordplay had to be learnt, and Jaskier’s combat skills, whilst decent enough for a travelling bard, were pretty piss-poor for a witcher. Even his enhanced senses seemed to only be good for making his head ache with the overwhelming input that he really didn’t know how to process.

It was almost enough to make him wish that he hadn’t made it through the Trials, as probability dictated was the most likely outcome, but Jaskier refused to entertain such painful thoughts. He would not dare wish for death, he would never even dream to simply give up his life, damn it. Wasn’t it better to live, after all? Jaskier loved life. He loved people and places and adventuring and singing and _living_. He wouldn’t even dare to simply wish that away.

But then again, could this really be termed as... Well, as living? Wasn’t he simply consigning himself to a fate of being worth nothing to anyone, fated to be cast aside by strangers and old friends alike?

At least _actual_ witchers had homes - and dare he say it, _family_ \- to return to. Jaskier had nowhere, had no one. Christ, without all the training that made a witcher in the first place, he didn’t even have any useful skills, he couldn’t even make a living as he was - and he’d know, he’d written songs about all the exploits that would have ended in his swift death had he been a little closer often enough.

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, the thought of Geralt crept into Jaskier’s mind.

This would be so much more bearable, his traitorous mind supplied, if _Geralt_ were here, and that thought was enough to twist his insides. The thought of Geralt, being there, comforting him, caring for him, making sure he was alright, Geralt telling him it was going to be okay in a low, rumbling voice, Geralt showing him how to hold a sword, insistent that he know how to defend himself properly, now... All those things that Geralt would never do, especially not for _him_.

A broken noise pierced that not-silence - it was filled with far too many deafening sounds, from the footsteps of rodents to the breeze rustling the leaves, to be silence, really - and Jaskier did his best to stop himself. He wasn’t about to start crying over Geralt, least of all a fantasy-Geralt that he longed for the company of, who was so far removed from Jaskier’s real _very best friend in the whole wide fucking world_ that he felt like he was insulting Geralt, a little bit, by even imagining it.

He missed the music, but he also missed the silence, Jaskier thought, as he attempted, seemingly in vain, to light a fire. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to produce a spark that would get the fire going in the first place - he tried very hard not to think of it as a metaphor.

Wasn’t this brilliant?

Oh, he’d had chances at happiness, he could have made anything of himself with his one life, but he’d gone and fucked it all royally. For _Geralt_. For himself, a little bit, because being around Geralt, even with all his dismissals and insults was enough for him, seeing as how Jaskier apparently had absolutely no fucking standards whatsoever, but for Geralt most of all.

Don’t think about Geralt, he told himself. Don’t think about Geralt. It was like a creed, now, not thinking about the White Wolf. Pretending everything was alright, like it had been before that mountain, where Geralt had took his heart in his hand, looked at it with such care and fondness for one moment, and then squeezed it, shattered it, until Jaskier was sure that there was nothing left.

But that little promise that, like everything else Jaskier had held important in his life, was so fleeting, so painfully impermanent.

How could he not think about Geralt? He _missed_ him. He missed sitting at Geralt’s side as they made camp, the witcher not quite irritated as he strummed a song by a crackling fire, nostrils filled with the soft smell of smoke and horse and just a little bit of onion, thinking, so naïvely, that everything was going to be _alright_.

Thinking, so foolishly, that anything ever was alright in the first place.

Jaskier, once the bard of the White Wolf of Rivia, simply curled up on his side before a pile of sticks that wouldn’t light, and lay there in the dirt.

He didn’t really know what else to do.

The forest was supposed to be quiet - and whilst Jaskier knew that it was his standards for what that constituted that had changed rather than the actual noise, it still bothered him immensely. It was like the world itself was trying to drown him.

If he’d still been at all inclined to compose, all of these metaphors would have made a damn good ballad.

The forest was supposed to be quiet, it was supposed to be _fucking_ quiet, and he would have _noticed_ the footsteps if he weren’t trying so hard to block the world out. Enhanced senses, his dick. Wasn’t the whole point of this whole bullshit, Jaskier thought, as a sword was levelled at his throat, to make it _easier_ to spot incoming threats, not harder?

“A witcher.”

“Hardly,” Jaskier scoffed, shifting and pulling himself to his feet, to stare more directly at the bandit - of course it was a fucking bandit, he couldn’t ever catch a break - who’d interrupted his contemplation.

“What do you mean, _hardly?_ ”

“What I said. I’m hardly a witcher. Really, it seems like you all see a pair of yellow eyes and immediately jump to conclusions. Were I a witcher, you’d already be dead for disturbing my _blessed silence_.”

It was far cruder a retort than Jaskier would ever have given were he in his usual state of mind, but he was tired and annoyed and angry, and honestly, _fuck_ those bandits. Did some people really have nothing better to do than pillage and kill at random? Gods.

“Well then, that’s good news for us. Makes it much easier for us to nip off with... oh, all of these fancy little trinkets you’re lugging around with you.”

Idly, Jaskier realised that one of the bandit’s friends had begun to pick through the makeshift pack he’d bundled out of a blanket.

Brilliant.

“Would you be wanting my coin, too?” Jaskier bit out sarcastically.

“You know what, I think we will,” the bandit said, and all of a sudden there was something in Jaskier’s abdomen that most certainly had not been there before.

Something cold, accompanied by an odd sensation of... of _wrongness_ , of something slipping in precisely where it shouldn’t be, and-

Sweet Melitele’s fine anal sphincter. She’d stabbed him, hadn’t she?

Yep, she’d definitely stabbed him. That was most certainly a dagger in his stomach.

“Can I keep this? Seeing as how it’s... You know. Lodged in my abdomen, and all.”

The bandit scoffed, and left him, after unhooking his coin pouch from its place on his belt. So much for decency, then. They were going to stab him, rob him, and leave him to die in the forest, and it was going to be such a ridiculously underwhelming way to die. Alone in the middle of nowhere, felled by mere bandits.

He wondered, briefly, why they didn’t take his weaponry - they might as well have, at that point.

Perhaps the weaponry in the pack had been more than enough.

Perhaps they didn’t want to touch a witcher.

Either way, Jaskier had bigger problems - namely the stab wound he was now sporting.

He’d patched stab wound up before, of course had, he’d travelled with Ger- with a witcher for years, after all. He knew damn well how to suture a stitch, and how to tend to various injuries, that wasn’t the issue.

No, his undoing lay in his utter lack of... well, anything, now, save for the clothes on his back, the weapons on his hip, and the knife in his gut. None of which would prove particularly useful in trying to fix the hole in his stomach.

Ordinarily, Jaskier knew, it was a terrible fucking idea to remove an object that one had been stabbed with - the offending item was the thing plugging up the wound and thus preventing him from bleeding out, but he couldn’t leave the damn dagger where it was. He had absolutely no desire to let his witchery body heal around it and spend fuck only knew how long with a knife sticking out of his midriff.

Witchers healed faster and bled slower than the average human - he at least knew that much He’d seen deep gashes on- on _witchers_ scab over and heal at terrifyingly fast and efficient rates. And wasn’t a witcher’s heartbeat supposed to be, oh, what was it, _four times slower than a normal man’s?_

Before he could reconsider this very stupid idea and rightfully conclude that it was, in fact, inane, Jaskier gripped the hilt of the dagger and yanked it swiftly from his person.

Underwhelmingly.

He expected... Well, he didn’t know what he expected. A burst of pain blossoming from the wound, blood coming dribbling out of his wound, or at least something akin to a negative reaction. He didn’t think it would feel so _empty_. But then again, he’d barely felt it when he got stabbed in the first place - had the trials permanently fucked up his sense of pain?

Either way, the dagger left behind only the palest imitation of a stab wound, the tiniest amount of blood seeping from it slowly, and all Jaskier could do was stare.

He didn’t know why he was surprised, if it was directed at the full extent to which witcher biology would mitigate injury - it was a _stab wound_ , he wasn’t supposed to be able to just _walk it off_ , gods damn it - or at the fact that it seemed that his luck was finally, _finally_ looking up.

How pathetic, if that was where the bar was. He hadn’t bled to death. That was all.

Well, at least he was alive and mostly unharmed. That was something, even if he didn’t have any prospects left at all.

Fuck going to Ard Carraigh. There was nothing for him there, not now that he had no wares left to trade. Jaskier was fine as he was. He could live off berries in the Kaedweni forests. He could maybe befriend a lone fox or something, become a hermit...

No, that sounded absolutely awful, stupid, and bad. He’d make a terrible hermit. He didn’t really go in for the whole one-with-nature, living-in-a-godsdamned-cave thing. And over his dead body would he grow a _beard_. It would not compliment his youthful charms at all.

Maybe, maybe he could swallow his hurt and find the magnanimous bastard by the name of Geralt of Rivia. Sure, the man might hate him, but he was altruistic at least. Perhaps he’d be able to at least help Jaskier a little bit... if only he knew how to find him.

Still, it was a goal, at least. He knew Geralt liked to go to Kaer Morhen in the winter, so if he just braved the forests for a few more weeks and headed towards Ard Carraigh and past it, after all...

Yeah. He could do that. Even if Geralt wanted so badly never to see him again, surely they could work together to un-fuck the whole mess that Jaskier had landed in. Besides, someone running around doing witcher experiments was a problem for the Wolves, too. It would be a common goal, something to work at in tandem.

That could work.

So much for not thinking about Geralt, though. It was rather pitiful, how he always ended up circling back to him, even when it was so clear that Geralt didn’t _actually_ value his company, merely tolerated it out of some misplaced sense of pity, or whatever the fuck. Something to cheer up the miserable idiot who threw all of his prospects away to sing songs about him.

It was, Jaskier thought, as he picked himself up and set off to find a more secure campsite, rather funny. He’d been so, so upset after the mountain, after baring his heart to Geralt. Who immediately left him alone at a campsite and told him to fuck off - and yet he couldn’t even remember what, exactly, the man had even _said_ to him.

He only knew that it had hurt him, hurt him a _lot_ , and probably far more than it should have. Jaskier was no stranger to Geralt insulting and belittling him... Perhaps that, more than anything, was what he’d realised in that moment. That all the biting remarks were just that - biting. Maybe it was the quiet realisation that there was no fond, teasing undertone to Geralt’s insults that had hit Jaskier so hard.

Maybe it wasn’t. Who knew? The memory of the mountain had been a bit vague even before the trials, more emotion than anything else, and afterwards... He could barely even remember what the scene had looked like.

An ear-splitting roar pierced through Jaskier’s angsting - and gods, he was _still_ angsting over Geralt, how _pathetic_ \- and Jaskier froze.

He’d heard that sound before, more times than he possibly should have, but he’d never really been a big believer in keeping safe distances from monster fights. Was that a blessing or a curse, now?

Either way, he knew what that was. The merchant’s words came back to him - _take a contract, witcher. I’ve heard that there’s a kikimora or summat in the forest_.

No.

It wasn’t possible; it couldn’t be.

No-one’s luck was _this fucking bad_.

He’d just been _stabbed_. For the love of the gods, he’d just been _stabbed_ , there couldn’t possibly be a-

The gods-damned kikimora leapt at him, because of course it did. Because of course, of all the random paths he could have taken through this utter nightmare of the forest, he would of course end up on the one that would bring him right to a kikimora’s swamp.

Unsheathing his short swords, bloodied dagger tucked neatly in his belt, Jaskier readied to get one good disorienting hit in, and run away as fast as he possibly could.

That was the ideal situation.

It wasn’t what happened.

Jaskier fell into a half-forgotten stance, acutely aware that he was almost certainly fucked. _One good disorienting hit_ was easier said than done - especially on a kikimora. Gods, the damn thing was so massive that he doubted he’d even be able to land a hit without getting mauled.

The bard-cum-witcher liked to think himself a logical, rational man beneath his tumultuously emotional exterior. Thusly, he - most logically and rationally, mind you - abandoned part one of his _hit-it-and-run-away_ plan and skipped immediately to running like his life depended on it, which... Well, to put it lightly, the sentiment was a lot less metaphorical than Jaskier was entirely comfortable with.

He could feel the wound in his abdomen pulling as he bolted, but it was all for naught. Kikimoras, apparently, could run like the fucking wind when it behooved them - must have been something to do with all those legs.

Jaskier turned and slashed at the kikimora’s legs, but his blows, whilst fatal on a human, served only to adorn the creature with shallow cuts and possibly make it mad.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Lunging forwards and slipping past its foremost legs, Jaskier slashed at its throat, and missed completely, nicking its chin in a highly ineffective move. The kikimora screeched once more, a high-pitched shrieking noise that was loud enough to make Jaskier’s ears bleed, and swiped at him again.

He supposed he should find it insulting, really, that the kikimora evidently had better aim at him, but he was marginally too preoccupied with trying to discern whether or not the damn thing had actually slashed his back open or merely sent him flying. Judging from the coppery tang that permeated his nostrils as he fell, it was the former - and if that wasn’t bloody brilliant, Jaskier didn’t know what was.

He crashed to the ground unceremoniously, his vision becoming spotty, and he picked himself up after a moment’s pause, but a moment was enough for the damn monster to make up the space between them. Jaskier raised his short swords, angling to catch the monster’s incoming limb as it struck another blow, and succeeded in feeling both the kikimora’s damn leg and his own blade cut across his face as the force knocked his arm back.

Fuck, he really hadn’t thought that through. He’d damn near lost an eye there, and his nose had been in danger too, for a second.

Jaskier gritted his teeth - and _fuck_ , his teeth were _fucking sharp_ , what even was the point of that? To make even his mouth uncomfortable? Jaskier gritted his teeth and lunged at the kikimora once more, painfully aware that he had absolutely no chance of winning, but _fuck it_. If he was going to die, he was going to die fighting; if his fate was that he was dragged off by this stupid fucking animal, then it would drag him kicking and screaming all the way.

He sliced at the kikimora again, and again, legs buckling beneath him, and the creature gave as good as it got - better than it got. A slash to his chest, another to his face, his left arm, his right leg, his abdomen - the overwhelming scent of blood, Jaskier’s own blood, filled his nostrils once more, bringing back recent memories of a dungeon beneath a manor in Kaedwen, of sidestepping bodies in the dark.

The dark.

It was going dark - were his eyes closed? It was dark.

The last thing he saw, before the pounding in his head gave way to nothingness, was the tell-tale glinting shine of silver stained in ichor.

What a cruel hallucination.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully the next chapter will be done quicker but next to update will be DttD and its fuckoff long chapters dfhshjkdghfkj why do i do this why can’t i just get to the point
> 
> Anyways if i laid on the angsty contemplation to thickly please tell me bc I’ve never written angst before and i need to know if i went overboard (i overthink a lot of things and maybe that doesn’t really make for an engaging fic idk)
> 
> Anywho thanks for reading I’m sorry for this (possible) absolute disappointment of a chapter


	3. who am i? to me, to you, an ecstasy of nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jfhgkdjshk im so sorry for the slow updates I’m perfectionist procrastinating, this is my favourite fic of mine and I want to get it absolutely _perfect_. HOPEFULLY next chapter won’t take so long :’D
> 
> Anyways, enjoy :D

Jaskier came to, dizzy and heavy and altogether feeling as if he’d lost a fight with a kikimora - predominantly because he _had_ \- but he came to, which was the important thing, and from the feel of it, he was still in possession of his nose, both his eyes, and all of his fingers and toes.

He was getting far too used to waking up after supposed near-death experiences.

His head was throbbing - as per fucking usual, now, it seemed - but other than that, he wasn’t, curiously, in pain, but it seemed that whatever experimental mutagens that thrice-damned sorcerer had dosed him with had apparently all but destroyed the part of his brain that registered physical hurt. How they managed _that_ , whilst all the while preserving Jaskier’s ability to feel a light breeze on his skin as clearly as if it were a gale-force wind, whilst sparing him the brain damage, Jaskier didn’t know, but he supposed that _that_ was supposed to be the minuscule little sliver of a silver lining on this thunderous storm-cloud.

Still, he wasn’t so far gone that he was going to start feeling _grateful_ for that blessing. Retaining some sense of self was the very least he was owed through this situation, and none of the thoughts of how much worse the whole debacle could have gone did anything to make what had happened any better.

Jaskier blinked his unfamiliar eyes open, and saw a ceiling.

An unexpected sight, but - and he’d declare this with the utmost hesitance, given that with his track record, this could just as well mean that he’d been captured again - not an unwelcome one.

Even if he had absolutely no idea where he was and how he’d gotten there.

This wasn’t as unfamiliar a situation as it really should have been for him, waking up in a strange place with absolutely no recollection as to how he got there, annoyingly enough, but this time, at least, seemed much more promising than the last in terms of his general wellbeing.

For one, he appeared to be in a bed, which was much nicer than anything a captor would most likely give him - and he doubted that anyone would waste resources on trying to lull him into a false sense of security, given the state he’d been in when he passed out.

Secondly, he could feel the bandages over his wounds, and smell the alcohol that had most likely been used to disinfect them. Someone had clearly gone to great lengths to patch him up, far beyond anything a potential captor would have done.

Jaskier tried to sit up, then, only to be met with resistance - a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t move. I’ve only just managed to stitch you back together again.”

The voice was firm, gruff but kind, and Jaskier found himself meeting the eyes - the yellow, catlike eyes - of a man who was undoubtedly a witcher. It made sense, that - who else would help him? Who else, actually, would even be able to try and help him, save him from being mauled by a kikimora? It wasn’t Geralt, and really, small mercies, because _that_ was not a reunion or a discussion that Jaskier wanted to have under these circumstances - no, his impromptu saviour was a burly man, who had a large scar splitting the right side of his face - a stranger.

Had Geralt told him even the slightest tidbit of information about witchers beyond the odd biological oddity Jaskier had borne witness to - such as the fact that they occasionally just up and ate meat _raw_ , which had been an extremely entertaining revelation to bear witness to, one that he’d immediately been forbidden from ever mentioning again by a mildly disgruntled and embarrassed Geralt - had the magnanimous White Wolf of Rivia ever deigned to give Jaskier even the _slightest_ little bit of information about his fellows, he would have hazarded a guess as to what the identity of this man might be, but as it was, he simply hummed noncommittally, and relaxed on the bed.

The witcher snorted, at that.

“So, how does a kikimora end up getting the jump on a witcher like that?”

Jaskier raised an eyebrow, the motion pulling at the skin of his face in an odd manner, until he abruptly realised that perhaps he should not be emoting so expressively until he was sure that he would not be reopening any cuts the damn kikimora had gifted him with. He had quite the sneaking suspicion, actually, that whatever was on his face, it was a slight bit deeper than a _cut_ \- kikimoras, as a rule, were not generally known for their gentleness.

“It didn’t,” Jaskier said, hesitant.

This man was a witcher, he might well be able to help him. But something - perhaps it was the last vestiges of his self-control, discovered four decades too late to be of any use to him - stopped him from speaking, a reminder at the back of his head than he couldn’t make own shitty circumstances everyone else’s problem.

The gods only knew that he’d pushed enough of his shit (and it did make the _shovelling shit_ metaphor hit a little bit harder than it perhaps was intended to) onto Geralt. While he hadn’t, thank you very much, made the man’s bad decisions _for_ him - he distinctly remembered telling him _not_ to try and take the djinn, or something along those lines... Well, alright, it wasn’t _distinct_ at all but he _had_ been dying at the time - Jaskier couldn’t deny that he did have a problem with making all of _his_ issues everyone _else’s_ issues too, depositing all his paltry problems and insecurities onto everyone who tolerated his company.

Funny. He was so much more self-aware in hindsight.

Still, now that he was actually sensible enough to make the call, he wasn’t about to blurt his pathetic little sob-story to the man who’d so kindly saved him, he’d burdened him enough. And, as far as Jaskier knew, even sorcerers tended to stay dead when killed, so he couldn’t even hide behind the excuse of wanting to prevent more people from further falling victim to the mage’s experimental witcher trials - there was nobody to perform such experiments left, unless perhaps the sorcerer had associates, hidden away to continue their work... But it was unlikely. Sorcerers were an arrogant bunch, they relied on others not at all if they could help it.

“It didn’t?”

The witcher was prompting him. Jaskier shook himself abruptly from his musings - he really had gotten to contemplative lately - and focused his attention back on the conversation. Apparently, the silence had stretched long enough for the witcher’s patience to wear down.

“No, it was more... I ran into it. I’d gotten stabbed, by bandits, and I wasn’t paying attention.”

At this, the scarred witcher raised his eyebrows. “And how did common _bandits_ jump a witcher?”

“They... Also didn’t. They wanted some shit that I was going to sell, only nobody was willing to actually _buy_ from me, so I told them to feel free to run off with it, and my coin, though that bit was supposed to be sarcastic, and then one of them stabbed me.”

The witcher snorted. Jaskier could sympathise. Now that he looked back on it, he wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Bandits never had been known for their honour, after all.

“That reminds me, kind stranger, would you enlighten me as to who might I be talking to?”

“Eskel, School of the Wolf. And yourself?”

Jaskier was most certainly not panicking internally over the sudden realisation that a simple introduction would be enough to out him as being not-a-witcher. Case in point, witchers had fucking _schools_? That was nice to know. It would have been nicer if he’d known about them earlier. Then, maybe, he could have prepared some excuse.

But he hadn’t.

“Julian,” Jaskier said, because _Jaskier_ was a famous name, a name that people knew, a name that belonged to a bard from Redania who sang songs about the White Wolf of Rivia, all the way up until he suddenly didn’t, and if _that_ wasn’t a beautiful giveaway as to what, exactly, his particular circumstances were, he didn’t know _what_ was.

Eskel didn’t seem to take offence at Jaskier’s lacklustre introduction, anyways, much to his relief. “Julian, odd. Don’t think I’ve ever heard of a witcher named Julian. At least, not one that hasn’t been dead for decades.”

At least Jaskier wasn’t going to be mistaken for anyone else, then.

“Well, I’ve hardly been hearing ballads in your honour, _Eskel_ ,” Jaskier sniped - he was childish enough to cling to the tenet that the best defence in a battle of words was a good offence, and he - as he supposed most people were, at least from what he’d seen - tended to be easier to read on the defensive anyways.

Eskel snorted at that. “Well, we can’t all make like Geralt and nab a live-in bard, can we?”

That certainly was a sentence, that had been said.

Jaskier had no idea if it was the stiff scabbing that no doubt adorned his face that kept him from reacting visibly, or his experience as a performer... He suspected that it was a combination of the two. Of course, he’d logically known that witchers were likely to be familiar with both Geralt and, given the fact that the White Wolf moniker was one that _he’d_ coined right after their first little escapade, the bard who sang about him, too.

He just hadn’t expected to be mentioned, was all. Hadn’t expected the reminder.

“Why not? I hear there’s more bards coming out of Oxenfurt and Lan Exeter than they know what to do with. You can nab one of those, I’m sure they won’t mind the offer.”

“If they don’t run screaming from a witcher.”

“I have it on good authority that if you approach a bard at any time after midnight, they’ll be too piss-drunk to tell, but I wouldn’t hold to that as a hard-and-fast rule.”

Jaskier pulled himself upright, finding it much easier than he had the last time he’d tried it, ignoring Eskel’s pointed look.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you end up in Kaedwen, so under-prepared for the Path?”

Oh, that was a fun question.

“Unintentionally,” Jaskier said, trying not to make it too obvious that he was stalling to think. “I don’t usually frequent the area, but circumstances forced my hand.”

“Don’t want to talk about it?”

Jaskier gave a small half-smile, pulling at his scabs. “Sorry.”

“I’ve got to say, though, you heal faster than any witcher I’ve ever known of.”

“Really? Strange, that.”

“Yeah. Even our lot - what that kikimora did to you, that should’ve laid you low for weeks.”

“And how long has it been?”

“Three days.”

Jaskier didn’t have much of a frame of reference for witcher healing. Despite his many offers, Geralt had always told him - and Jaskier wished he could add a _politely_ as a qualifier there, but sadly, he could not, on account of Geralt being most delightfully blunt in conversation - to _fuck off_ when he’d suggested that he help him tend to his wounds.

But _three days_ did not seem to be that long a time to recover, for a witcher - most of Geralt’s cuts had scabbed over and damn near healed completely after three days, with just the tiniest hints of rawness left behind.

Gods. Geralt. He still fucking missed Geralt, even if the other man clearly didn’t care much for Jaskier. Had the Trials given him separation anxiety to boot? He hadn’t been this pathetically desperate before them.

“Your fucking _innards_ were hanging out of your stomach.”

Right. He was fairly certain that that, at least, was abnormal.

“And I suppose I can thank you for putting them back for me?”

Eskel nodded. “I’ve had something similar happen, myself, and it took me weeks to come back from that. But here you are, near recovered, after three _days_.”

“I’m sure most of that is thanks to you,” Jaskier offered. Honestly, he was just as out of his depth here as Eskel seemed to be. He supposed the answer to whatever was going on lay in the _experimental_ part of the _experimental witcher Trials_ he’d been So kindly subjected to. Evidently, whoever the fuck the sorcerer had been, they were doing a little bit more than trying to make more witchers.

He just wished they’d deigned to fuck off and write books about it rather than making it Jaskier’s problem.

“I doubt it’s thanks to me. I’m not much of a field medic.”

“Nonsense. You stuck my insides back where they were supposed to be, so my continued presence upon the land is now _your_ fault.”

“Ah. Is that supposed to be a bad thing, then?” Eskel’s half-smile at Jaskier’s theatrics was possibly the most wonderful thing he’d seen in weeks.

“The _worst_. I have it on very good authority that I am, in fact, insufferable.”

Eskel raised an eyebrow, and Jaskier did his very best to grin at him.

He was fairly certain that the tightness of his face ruined the effect of it, but the intent, at least, was clear, if Eskel’s barely-audible huff of (hopefully) amused breath was anything to go by. He’d missed this, the easy camaraderie he could find with a stranger - not too many strangers were willing to fraternise with witchers, or witcher-adjacent former-bards, just as a matter of principle.

It was too bad that he wouldn’t be able to repay Eskel for sticking his mangled body back together, but, especially now, Jaskier didn’t have much at all to his name.

A shame. Jaskier really did like him.

“Julian? You good?”

“Just thinking.”

“Right. I’ll-”

“I won’t be able to pay you back,” Jaskier blurted, because fuck him, he didn’t want to end up stiffing Eskel as they parted, he deserved better than that, especially that he’d quite literally saved Jaskier’s goddamn _life_.

Eskel’s eyebrows raised minutely. “I do have eyes, you know. I know you don’t have-”

“No! I mean,” Jaskier swallowed, he’d interrupted again, “that I won’t be able to pay you back at all. I’m not- I can’t- Oh, _fucking hell_ , I don’t know if I can-”

“Julian.”

Eskel looked mildly amused.

That was odd.

And unexpected. Generally, when someone who owed you started stumbling over their excuses as to why they wouldn’t be able to pay you back, the subsequent reaction was some expression of _anger_ , rather than... this.

Jaskier blinked.

“Like I was about to say, I did notice that you don’t have anything on you, I’m not expecting immediate reimbursement. You can travel with me till you’re back on your feet, and who knows, maybe you’ll return the favour?”

Eskel’s tone was amiable, and still, Jaskier felt his heart sinking, right down to his feet.

He wasn’t what Eskel thought he was; there was no _way_ he’d be able to hold himself to whatever standard witchers had for themselves, whatever standards Eskel now thought Jaskier was going to be able to hold himself to. There was nothing good waiting for him down that path, only the sure, looming spectre of all the ways this entire situation would go to shit when he inevitably failed to do what he was expected to.

There was no reason to mince his words about it. Eskel had saved his life, patched him up, and asked for near-fucking-nothing in return, and Jaskier, the bastard that he was, was all set to take advantage of that.

He hated himself just a little bit more for that, but he was _desperate_ , and Eskel’s amiable nature made him realise just how deep that desperation ran. He’d thought he could make do on his own, after leaving the _fucking_ basement, but - he couldn’t. He couldn’t, that was the thing, he was far too ill-prepared to trudge around with a witcher’s damn face on his own.

Jaskier simply wasn’t prepared to handle it, loathe as he was to admit it. As a bard, when he could stop at any inn and get paid, even, to play there? Sure. He was fine on his own. And, failing that, he had quite a few acquaintances he could lean on if ever he came upon hard times.

Or, he had done.

He was fairly certain, knowing them as he did (not particularly well, but being familiar with their biases), that the best he could hope for now was spit on his cheek and marching orders if he dared show _this_ face on anyone’s door.

And he’d rather not taint his own legacy like that.

Melitele’s tits, he was selfish.

Eskel’s offer was lucrative and impossible to accept in equal measure, because Jaskier _wasn’t_ a witcher, he was - and Geralt had known it far before he’d accepted it, even if he’d been reluctant to outright say it, for some asinine reason - a liability. He’d been good for negotiations and lute-playing, as the White Wolf’s bard, but now, he wasn’t even that.

If he said yes, he’d be taking advantage.

But if he said no...

Cold nights on the forest floor, with an empty stomach and nary a thing to his name, lost in his thoughts, and at the mercy of anything he couldn’t either incapacitate with his rusty swordsmanship or outrun on foot, his only companion his memories of better times and false likenesses of the people he’d burdened in life... Or the one person, anyways, and Jaskier would still really rather not think about Geralt of fucking Rivia, despite the frequency with which he bloody well _did_.

He was faintly aware that he’d lapsed into his own thoughts again, and gods, if that wasn’t an annoying habit that he was forming, but in the end...

Well, he’d weighed his options thoroughly enough.

The gnawing dread in his stomach, the part of him that was loathe to say yes and take _fucking advantage_ like that, was pushed aside swiftly enough.

“It would be my honour to accompany you, oh mighty Eskel,” he said, with a smirk that was most definitely hollow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier for _fuck’s_ sake just tell him that you’re not a damn witcher
> 
> Why doesn’t he do that? Why, because it would be absolutely awkward and I would think he’s scared of being abandoned when his comparative uselessness is revealed idk
> 
> I’m weird enough that my instinctual reaction was Honesty Was Never An Option - there’s real-life precedent for The Explanation Is Perfectly Understandable But I’d Rather Die Than Admit It approach in that it’s something I’ve done so many times because inconveniencing oneself is fun! Let’s call it a mix of Jaskier’s ego and guilt over always pushing his problems onto everyone else (let’s be honest, that’s not entirely unprecedented *cough _Cintra_ cough* but he’s catastrophising a bit - a lot - here) in his case.
> 
> Anyways i hope you like the chapter and Eskel isn’t too ooc


	4. heads crammed full with maybe-facts that whimsy will dismiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you [DancerInTheShadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DancerInTheShadows/pseuds/DancerInTheShadows) for your help with beta-ing this fic!!
> 
> Incidentally, a good quarter of this chapter is beta-ed, whilst the rest was written manically in the early hours of the morning (various mornings) by an impatient me - I wonder if it shows. I miss the days when I could crank out chapters in one sitting :(
> 
> That said, if you haven’t read [Forever Wanting More](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24400183?view_full_work=true), you absolutely should!!!!!! If for no other reason than that it’s one of the best fics I’ve ever read (I’m incredibly hyped for fwm hfdgjshdfg)

Travelling with Eskel was... nice.

It was a welcome reprieve, at least, from the solitary months of at first, loneliness, and later aching isolation, even with the unwelcome reminder that he was, in fact, lying to his travel companion by omission constantly in the back of his mind.

They left the shabby little town the morning after Jaskier woke, with Jaskier citing expenses and unpayable debts, and Eskel raising an eyebrow but leveraging no complaints. Inns, the former bard knew, were expensive ventures when one was a witcher - had been even when Geralt had shown up with his very own barker singing his praises in tow, and he dreaded to think what the cost have been for _two_ of them.

Even if Jaskier _still_ wasn’t a witcher.

The world, he was coming to find, cared little for semantics. A glimpse of cat’s eyes (gnarled scars, too, that Jaskier hadn’t yet seen but could feel pulling the skin on his face in odd directions; he pondered asking Eskel if the feeling ever quite went away, but decided against poking at such a likely-sensitive matter so crudely) - just a first impression of what they expected him to be, and in that instant, a harsh judgement was passed on him with a grand degree of finality, and that was very much that.

He thought he’d understood, back when he’d travelled with Geralt.

He hadn’t understood _shit_.

To have such fear and dismissal and revulsion directed straight at oneself was... jarringly different, he realised, than when it was merely aimed at a friend, as frustrating as it might be.

Jaskier hadn’t seen his reflection in a long time. Idly, he wondered if he’d take a second to recognise it when he did.

The scars from the bloody kikimora spanned almost the entirety of his body, he knew - he had, unfortunately, had to realise the extent to which he had failed to avoid injury whilst bathing and changing into his now roughly-mended clothes - he could thank Eskel for that one - and it was rather uncomfortable, the degree of strangeness that his own body’s new unfamiliarity brought with it.

The damn senses had at least been kind enough not to leave physical marks - he could ignore a fucking headache all he wanted, but _this_...

The rough, uneven scars would stay on his skin forever.

Still, barely-healed scabs or not, it didn’t matter - his circumstances couldn’t be set aside for his own mental comfort, as much as he may have wished otherwise. Surely, _surely_ he had bigger things to worry about than his fucking face.

Jaskier travelled easily enough on foot beside Eskel’s horse - he’d walked alongside Roach often enough, with a weighty and unwieldy lute on his back, too - keeping up with Scorpion was hardly a problem, even with the stiffness in his limbs that he was sure he could thank the kikimora for. He could make better time, even - witcher stamina was, as Jaskier was coming to realise, due in part to the mutations; either that, or he was exercising his his sleep, but... Occam’s Razor, and all that.

All those lectures he’d half-slept through as a teen really were serving him well, now.

Eskel must have been suspicious of him at least a little, Jaskier knew. He didn’t have the kind of scarring that one would expect from a genuine witcher - lash marks on his back, yes, his family had never been particularly _kind_ , but none of the rough, jagged marks that one genuinely would associate with a witcher... though Jaskier supposed he was overcompensating for that, now.

Though evidently, either he’d decided that Jaskier (Julian, to him, he supposed) was entitled to his secrets, which was suspiciously magnanimous of him, or he was... Jaskier didn’t know. Perhaps he’d be more perceptive, more likely to at least try to puzzle out what was going in Eskel’s head under different circumstances - though he really should stop comparing himself at present with who he’d been a few weeks past and never would be again - but he was a little out of sorts, what with his given predicament.

His _predicament_. What a way to talk around the situation.

Jaskier was fucked, his senses were fucked, his life was fucked, and all because some ridiculous bastard wanted to play around trying to make _another fucking witcher_.

Eskel kept a brisk pace - brisker than Geralt, but Jaskier refused to entertain thoughts of what that might imply in regards to Geralt’s opinion of him, could he _not fucking think about Geralt for five damn minutes, anyways_ \- and they’d made it a good way from the village.

Oh, the charming, nondescript little village that had almost run them out for the crime of both him and Eskel daring to disrupt their miserable little lives with their presence at the _same time_ , as if having two yellow-eyed individuals around was some kind of heinous affront to their honour. Never mind that Jaskier’s insides had, at the time of their arrival, been more his outsides than anything else - clearly, they were undeserving of any scrap of sympathy.

The journey was silent, the kind of eerie silence that Jaskier had gotten used to since he’d woken up, with neither party too interested in making idle small talk, but that was fine. They weren’t trying to be friends - Jaskier had learnt _that_ fucking lesson the hard way, that he couldn’t just force a camaraderie with anyone he mildly enjoyed the company of - but travelling with Eskel was nice.

It was as they were trekking down a sparsely-walked forest path, overgrown with all manner of plants and roots, that Jaskier realised that he felt lighter, that tension he hadn’t even registered had bled out of his shoulders. He supposed having someone else to rely on and inconvenience for all of the little things would do that, however much he disliked it.

He’d really thought he was more self-sufficient than he’d turned out to be, annoyingly enough.

They didn’t, surprisingly enough, run into any kind of the unsavoury creatures that tended to haunt the less-travelled roads - anything that might have caused them trouble stayed far enough from the path that the ominous growls and screeches were barely-there even to Jaskier’s oversensitive ears. He tried his best not to flinch at every noise, catching his hands from drifting to the hilts of his pitifully useless short swords, and to push down that feeling of unease that tried to flood his limbs and put him on edge.

It hadn’t bothered him this much before the fucking kikimora. Another little bullet point to scribble down and add to the veritable library of records detailing exactly how Jaskier’s life had gone to shit since the sorcerer had jumped him on a Temerian dirt track.

Or maybe before that. Maybe his life had gone to shit before he even suspected, back when...

No. That was impossible.

Gods, Jaskier was- Jaskier was _brooding_. He was fucking brooding. Like some kind of scowly, menacing bundle of emotional repression and bad memories... like _Geralt_ , even.

Bloody _hell_.

They made camp only once the sun had already set, and Eskel politely informed Jaskier that he would hunt for food, which was so utterly fine by him that it was all he could do not to broadcast his visible enthusiasm - a task which he failed abysmally at, if the quirk of Eskel’s lips as he left Jaskier alone with all his belongings (a move just illogical enough to stir suspicion) was anything to go by on the matter.

He should have been more worried about what the implications of that might have been, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to care. He had no illusions about the fact that he was entirely at Eskel’s mercy, as obviously ill-suited to... well, any of this, really, as he so clearly was.

It had been weeks and the migraines still plagued him.

One of the more useful skills he’d picked up over all the years he’d spent travelling - one of the few, too, given the extent to which he’d relied on inns and Geralt - was the ability to build a fire, and how to conceal it reasonably enough for it not to act as a beacon to any monster or bandit within a generous radius, so he set about making himself useful.

His hands hadn’t been scarred too badly, with only a thin, white line running across the back of his right hand where he’d undoubtedly done something unbearably stupid with a short sword whilst half-conscious, but it was distracting enough that Jaskier felt his eyes being drawn to it as he worked to build the damn fire.

It wasn’t the hand that strummed the lute whilst he pressed chords down with the other. He could see the tips of his nails, thicker and curling into a sharp point as they grew - perhaps this was why Geralt filed his so fastidiously.

It bothered him immensely.

The crackling flames were burning up the logs merrily enough, now, leaving Jaskier with little to do but sit and let his mind tug his attention to thoughts that he’d rather pay no heed to.

Fuck this.

Unsheathing one of his looted short swords, Jaskier considered the logistics of bladed weaponry as a nail clipper. It wasn’t going to be anywhere near as neat and simple as Jaskier was used to, but the little _claws_ had begun to bother him in a way they hadn’t before, back when he’d been more concerned about how he’d find food or shelter or... or anything he was used to, really, now that he was so utterly alone.

It wasn’t too incredibly difficult to figure out the logistics - Jaskier knew that it would be infinitely simpler to swiftly saw his nail over the sword in a bit to remove it, rather than attempt to manoeuvre the sword over his nail, but it was frustratingly menial work. Still, he’d managed to get through all the nails on his right hand - dominant hand first, it was the priority - and two on the left by the time Eskel came back to the camp, with an armful of rabbits.

“Sanitary,” he commented, realising immediately what Jaskier was doing. “Did you clean that after the kikimora?”

Jaskier shuddered at the reminder, but kept his tone carefully nonchalant. “I didn’t draw blood, it’ll be fine.”

“Your standards seem pretty low, there.”

“Eh, I’ve been sleeping in filth and muck for weeks. If I was going to contract anything, I probably already would have.”

“Pretty blasé of you to assume so.”

“What could I do about it? It was that, or paranoia, and that’s just far too much effort for me.”

Eskel chucked. “Fair enough. You wanna skin rabbits with me? After you clean your filthy hands, of course, but it’d go faster if we both work at it.”

“Sure.”

Jaskier got up and immediately started pilfering through Eskel’s supplies. Cleaning one’s hands in the middle of a forest was not, insofar as these kinds of endeavour went, particularly easy a feat to accomplish. In the absence of any kind of water source or soap - soap, how Jaskier missed it, missed the days that he’d carried little squares of scented soap that he’d picked up in farmer’s markets and various little shops tucked away in backwater towns - he had to improvise - dabbing some of the disinfecting alcohol Eskel carried with him over his hands, instead. His fault, for picking such an inopportune campsite.

His newly-cut nails were rough and uneven, scratching at his skin.

Jaskier tried not to think about it.

The rabbits - there were four, so assumedly they’d take two each - were piled neatly between the log Jaskier had been perched on, and where Eskel currently sat, and Eskel had already halfway finished skinning his first before Jaskier started.

He’d done this so many times before with Geralt, it was practically second nature. Familiar motions executed by unfamiliar hands - it unnerved him, how quickly he was growing numb to the chilling sensation of wrongness, of unfamiliarity, that had lodged itself in his gut. Ignoring it in favour of focusing on the task at hand shouldn’t have come this easily.

“So, Julian.”

“Eskel,” Jaskier replied amiably, not looking up from the rabbit.

“Forgive me for beating this particular horse, but how did you end up as you were?”

Ah.

So he’d just been naïve in assuming Eskel had been satisfied with his non-answers. Of course he’d want to know who he was travelling with, it was hardly reasonable to expect a damn _witcher_ to be _trusting_.

Jaskier’s wishful thinking had struck once again.

His hesitation, too, seemed to be speaking volumes for him, at least judging by the pensive look in Eskel’s cat-like eyes, and, given the question, he doubted it was saying anything good. How bloody inconvenient, to be sold out by his own damn self. He was - or, at the very least, he had been - a bard, a performer... It was downright embarrassing, how easy he’d gotten to read.

“Unfavourable circumstances,” he said, finally, and Eskel _chuckled_.

“Contemplative, aren’t you?”

“I guess. I never used to be.”

“Not gonna answer my question, I take it?”

“It’s a hard question to answer,” Jaskier said, his hands still going through the motions of skinning the rabbit that he’d at some point stopped paying attention to. “Very complicated. If it had been a story, I’d have criticised the author for being so utterly vague and incomprehensible in their narrative.”

Frowning, Eskel rubbed the scar on his cheek, his own rabbit long-skinned and ready to be cooked. “Is there a reason you don’t want to tell me?”

“My right to silence is protected under the Statute of Nunya here in Kaedwen.”

“Right, right, nunya business, I get it, but I’m curious as to who exactly I’m travelling with. Humour me?”

“Someone who has never been to Nilfgaard,” Jaskier smirked, forcing a grin onto his face. Best keep his answers lighthearted. It was so much easier to avoid the question when Eskel couldn’t read anything off him other than teasing.

“Not even the newer territories?”

“No. Cintra, if we’re counting it, but I stick to the North if I can help it, which I can.”

Ha! A truth! He was really being quite forthcoming, all things considered.

Eskel didn’t seem to appreciate it, however, judging by the deepening frown on his face. “Are you _sure_?”

“That I’ve never been down south? Pretty sure, yeah.”

“You’ve never been to Nilfgaard? Ebbing?” Eskel paused, hesitant, before continuing. “The Tir Tochair mountains?”

Jaskier looked at him blankly.

“ _Shit_. Alright.”

Oh. _Oh_. It seemed he’d just inadvertently proved something to Eskel. Or, rather, he’d _disproved_ it. Of course he’d have theorised about the strange, half-dead witcher he’d asked to travel with him - keep your friends close and your enigmas closer, after all, and Jaskier’s wholehearted secrecy had fucked him over royally in that department.

Nilfgaard.

Jaskier had no idea what was in Ebbing or Tir Tochair, but the fact that Nilfgaard had been a suspicion of Eskel’s at all bode ill. They were the aggressors in the war the continent was teetering on the edge of... or maybe it had already begun? He didn’t know, having been thoroughly out of the loop before the whole Trials thing - he’d not spared current affairs, with the exception of Cintra’s fall, a thought since shortly after the dragon hunt, back when he’d almost kicked it without his very own special witcher bodyguard to protect him the _first_ time round.

But if Eskel suspected that Jaskier was from Nilfgaard, he had to have suspected that Jaskier was a spy, or some kind of agent at the very least.

Charming.

When Jaskier had dabbled in espionage - and he’d _only_ dabbled, he’d hardly call himself a _proper_ spy - it had been for Redania, _thank-you-very-much_. Not those pretentious little twats down south, trying to start a whole damn _Empire_. Especially when their throne seemed to attract violent megalomaniacs and violent megalomaniacs alone. It was a terrible combination, a violent megalomaniac and an Empire.

Regardless, that was all beside the point.

The point was that Eskel had likely asked him to travel with him because he thought him a threat. A threat to what? Witchers were neutral in human affairs; if Eskel thought a Nilfgaardian agent would be dangerous then he had to have taken a side, the North’s side.

The neutrality thing was a well-touted thing, Jaskier knew - he’d heard it from Geralt, on occasion, but all the papers he’d read that had made reference to witchers had emphasised it, that a witcher has no allegiance, and will hunt anyone’s monster for anyone’s coin. Maybe, in retrospect, he should have researched witchers back at Oxenfurt. The gods only knew that Geralt had been unforthcoming enough that it would have been necessary (case in point: witchers had fucking _schools_ ).

But if witchers were supposed to remain unaffiliated in wartime, and Eskel had aligned himself with the North, then something must have pushed him to do that.

“Julian?”

He’d lapsed into a contemplative silence - and _fuck you_ , he was not _brooding_ \- again.

Logically, he should at least try to deduce Eskel’s motivations further, puzzle him out like he’d been trying to do with Jaskier - and the gods knew that Jaskier was better at it, the Redanian Secret Service hadn’t let him play spy with them for nothing (good times), but _bloody hell_.

The one person to offer him a modicum of fucking help, and he’d only done it... why? To get information out of him? Most likely. Otherwise, it would have been far more expedient to let that damn kikimora take care of him instead, less morally questionable, too. Plenty of people would walk past easily.

Jaskier stared at the skinned rabbit in his hands.

All of a sudden, his appetite had all but vanished.

“Julian? Are you alright?”

“Sorry I didn’t end up being a Nilfgaardian spy,” Jaskier managed, voice thick, and fuck keeping his cards close to his chest, because it was Eskel or foraging in the undergrowth forever. “I’m sure kikimoras take refunds, though.”

“Don’t joke like that.”

“Why do you care?”

A sigh. “Yeah, I’m not inclined to trust you, I don’t know who you are, where you’re from - there’s few enough witchers that I know most of them by name, and-”

“Oh, that’s a nice accusation,” Jaskier huffed, the argument that it was not unfounded in the least muted out by the hurt that really shouldn’t have been there. “And yet, my name’s been Julian since my parents took a good, long look at me and decided I was Julian-shaped.”

Eskel held his hands up in surrender, and Jaskier was not inclined in the least to bring up that he hadn’t been Julian for going on two decades, now. “My bad. Julian.”

“No hard feelings.”

“Out of interest, though, since we’re clearing the air, why were you living in the undergrowth with barely a damn thing to your name?”

Damn it. Why _couldn’t_ Eskel just accept Jaskier’s secrecy?

“Didn’t have much else to do,” he snapped - not meaning to, but gods, was he tired of this questioning, and there was _no way_ Eskel wanted to be saddled with a completely inept mutant bard if he _did_ ever find out the truth. “What, did you think it was by choice?”

“No, I’m just curious as to the circumstances. If you weren’t trying to keep a low profile-”

“Which you’ve still not discounted, am I right? You’re entirely too forthcoming about your theories with a possible spy.”

“ _Are_ you a spy, then?”

“No,” Jaskier bit out. “I’m not a spy, and if I _was_ a spy, I’d be more ashamed of being such a shit one, given the state you found me in.”

“Alright, alright!” Eskel raised his hands placatingly, and Jaskier scowled at him. “I’d just like to know.”

“I gathered as much.”

_Witchers don’t have emotions_ , his fine and glorious _cock_. He was as emotionally fraught after the Trials as he had been in his glorious teenage years - though at least this time, he did have _reason_ to be. Still, his composure was... fragile, to say the least, and it had gotten very old, very fast a few months ago, Eskel wouldn’t even have gotten this much from him - he’d been good at thinking on his feet and diverting suspicion.

At least, he liked to think so. Whether he’d been good or not, however, was a most point - he’d definitely been _better_ than he currently was.

But regardless.

“Why is this so important to you?” Jaskier grumbled, this time taking it upon himself to break the silence that had settled around them. “I mean, I know fuck-all about you, too, but you don’t see me prying.”

“You could, if you felt like it.”

“Would you answer me honestly if I did?”

Eskel rubbed his scar again - it was definitely a nervous tic. “We could made a mutually beneficial trade of it? I answer you a question, you answer me one.”

Hesitating, Jaskier considered the offer. It would be incredibly poor form of him to accept it and lie to Eskel’s face - but, on the other hand, Eskel had assumed himself to be travelling with a proper - if injured and temporarily out-of-commission - witcher, not some unfortunate nobody who’d ended up getting dosed with a set of experimental mutagens and somehow ended up even less competent than he’d been before.

He doubted Eskel would be too happy to end up with him as a responsibility, a liability.

“Julian?”

“Give a man some time to consider!” Jaskier raised an eyebrow, making a half-hearted effort to push some dramatic incredulity into his tone. “You think I’d just tell you my life story because you asked nicely?”

Eskel frowned. “I’ll admit, I want to know more about who you are as a person, but it’s not like you’ve not given me reason to be curious.”

“Even if I’m not a spy?”

“Especially if you’re not a spy. And, given the state I found you in with the kikimora, I’m inclined to believe you’re being truthful.”

Most likely, Jaskier shouldn’t joke around about being a damn spy after Eskel’s not-quite-accusation, but their conversation was already so full of guesses and outright contradictions that he was fairly certain the whole thing could, if necessary, be discounted if ever they argued it again to clear the air. Tapping his fingers, the two with still-uncut nails, against the palm of his right hand, Jaskier glared at his companion.

“Maybe I _am_ a spy, and that was a misdirection, _Eskel_. You don’t know me. It could have been part of my epic spy plan to fool you into thinking I’m just a harmless-” _bard_ , he’d been about to say.

Melitele’s tits. Could he do nothing right? He wasn’t a bard any-fucking-more, was it really so hard to remember that? Sure, force of habit, but Jaskier had, at one point, been a _spy_. He’d taken on not getting caught out by force of habit as a _job_.

“-Just a harmless, hapless nobody on the verge of being utterly decimated by some swampy bastard. I’ve been told it’s a very efficient and oft-employed spy tactic.”

Eskel snorted, before sobering. “Look, Julian-”

“I was already looking.”

“Julian. Do you...”

“Do I?”

“Do you _remember_ how you ended up fighting a kikimora, barely-armed?”

Jaskier opened his mouth to reply.

Closed it.

Bit his lip.

That was an out for him, offered up so generously on a silver platter. Amnesia would be such a perfect explanation for his lack of skills, specialised knowledge and general inability to explain where in all the nine bloody hells Julian the hitherto-unknown Sort-Of a Witcher had originated from - and fucking _damn him_ , Jaskier wasn’t going to spill his guts about the fact that he wasn’t a witcher at all, now or ever.

It wasn’t like the mutations were reversible, at any rate, and as he was... Jaskier was a pitiful man on the wrong side of his forties who’d recently received a dose of witcher mutagens and was functionally useless to society in all capacity.

His logic was flimsy at best, he knew... But least amnesia held intrigue.

Jaskier looked down at the skinned rabbit in his lap, and let his silence speak for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time, no update!
> 
> DttD is now my first ultimate priority and i will kick my own arse until i post chapter 11 because godDAMN
> 
> I’m sorry for my slow updates, I’m blaming Circumstances once again :’D
> 
> Thank you all so much for being so patient and bearing with me, it means a lot <3

**Author's Note:**

> This sure is a fic that i am writing huh
> 
> I’m @stars-in-my-damn-eyes on tumblr if you want to yell at me about the Witcher or send me witchery writing prompts :D


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